Do you still trust Facebook? Preserving your bookmarks, getting rid of spam in Outlook, getting rid of burn-in on an OLED TV, mapping apps to plan road trips, speeding up an old iMac and more of your calls!

Audience Questions

Audience QuestionsHour 1

Johnny bought the Owl Dashcam and needs a few tips. Leo says that the Owl ties into its own LTE connection and communicates to you through your mobile device. It's also voice controlled and can save video clips with a simple command. Johnny is concerned that connecting the Owl to his onboard diagnostic port will void his Audi's warranty. Leo says that connecting to the OBD2 port could give someone access to the car's computer system, but the Owl only draws power from it. So it's probably just a warning created by "the lawyers." Connecting to the OBD2 has been a common thing with third-party car tools for years.

John got a notification that the "XMarks" browser utility is being discontinued. Is there an alternative? Delicious used to be a good one, but Yahoo bought it and killed it. Leo says Pinboard is what he uses. It's a paid service, but that guarantees it will stick around. He could also store his bookmarks in an HTML file and then make that his homepage.

Audience QuestionsHour 2

Bill has been getting DLL errors. Leo says that the only real way to solve this is to do a complete Windows reset, which is really easy in Windows 10. Bill can just press the Start button, then select Settings > Update & Security > Recovery. Under "Reset this PC", he should select "Get Started".

Bill should restart his PC to get to the sign-in screen, then press and hold down the Shift key while selecting the Power icon, and select "Restart" in the lower-right hand corner of the screen. After his computer restarts, he can select Troubleshoot > Reset this PC.

Steve wants to use his lightning headphones into a regular headphone jack. Leo says he probably won't be able to do that since the Lightning connector is proprietary. Those Lightning headphones are for one thing only — for use with the iPhone. Walmart does sell a female-to-male Lightning adapter, and there's one that actually comes with the Apple Pencil as well. Leo's not sure that this would actually work, though. It may be easier to just buy a cheap pair of earbuds that would have the proper connector.

Larry is tired of spam and wants to know how to get rid of it in Outlook. Leo says to wash the email through Gmail. He can open an account at Gmail, and then have it pick up his Outlook mail. That way Google will wash the spam out of his email and then he can pick it up through his Outlook client. That's free. There is a paid service called OnlyMyEmail, but Leo says that Gmail does a great job.

Norm has an LG OLED C6 TV. It's the curved one. He loves the HDR and Dolby Vision. He got the Comcast 4K X1 DVR as well, and he's been enjoying the replay of the Olympics in 4K HDR. But there is a drawback — he's seeing some ghosting. Leo says that he can reset that by turning it off for a few days. OLED doesn't have permanent burn-in, so letting it rest for awhile can solve the problem, in theory anyway.

Audience QuestionsHour 3

Amy wants to speed up her 2010 iMac by replacing the SATA drive with an SSD. Can it be done? Leo says it can, but it's not for the faint of heart. She'll have to use a suction cup to pull off the LCD screen. Leo recommends going to Otherworld computing and watching the videos on how to do it. It could be a great project for her teenager.

Sam was printing up his son's graduating announcements and his cat walked across the keyboard and now the computer is blank. What happened? Leo says that there is a button on the keyboard that can turn off the screen. It's probably one of the function keys that was triggered to make the laptop look for an external screen. From the chatroom - here's an article on the subject. He can also program those buttons, so it may be a good idea to disable it.

Ed had to reinstall an old version of Windows and when he tried to authenticate it, it won't let him verify with a serial number. Leo says that's probably because Microsoft has discontinued the authentication server and turned it off. So he can't activate it, and it will expire in 30 days. There's probably a workaround though if he does a Google search. Microsoft really should keep it running for people like Ed. He may be able to call them and get it authenticated, but it may just be time to move on.

George is having issues viewing images on Google Images and downloading them. Leo says that was due to users not buying clipart anymore when they can simply go to Google Images and download them for free. He can still save them, but technically it is piracy. That's why Leo recommends going into the tools section under "rights" and selecting "creative commons" or "approved for reuse".

Bob has a 2011 MacBook Pro with an SSD. Now he's trying to upgrade to macOS High Sierra and he's having issues. Leo says that it's looking for the original drive, and since Bob installed it as a secondary drive, it keeps looking to install on the first drive. The simple solution is to swap his drives and put the SSD as the main drive, and the other drive as his second hard drive.

This Week in Tech News

There's a huge security flaw in WINRAR, that will enable hackers to take over your computer. So Leo advises that if you use WINRAR to zip/unzip your files, that you should update to the latest beta version. But you have to go to the WINRAR site and manually download the update. There is no automatic update.

Accusing Apple of anti competitive behavior, Spotify's music streaming service says that the company charges a 30% commission for subscriptions through the Apple store, while charging 30% less for their own music service.

Leo bought the Samsung Galaxy S10+, a phone with 10TB of storage, 12GB of RAM, and a ceramic back. For $1500. Leo says it's a really nice phone. Reviews are mixed, but buyers seem to like it, with preorders doubling the last generation. Samsung has avoided "the notch," but instead, they have a "hole punch," which houses two selfie cameras. Is that any different than the notch? Not really. It's also nearly as big as the Note 9 and has the best screen on the market. But Leo says it's so fast that it's hyper-responsive. It reacts to being touched on the edge. It also has three cameras on the back. It also has an under-screen fingerprint ID, which isn't very fast and requires a little patience. AND IT HAS A HEADPHONE JACK!

In a new announcement, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Facebook is moving towards a more privacy-focused experience, including encryption, private groups, and more. Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook doesn't have a reputation for security and privacy, and they plan to change all that. With sharing on Facebook going down by 25%, especially with younger users, Zuckerberg says that the social media network is going to move from a town square, to your own living room. It's a serious PIVOT. Leo says that Zuckerberg has made promises like this before, so we'll have to wait and see what happens. Is it possible to have a privacy-focused Facebook? Only time will tell, but Leo says it's a good idea.